The World's Largest Iceberg Is Melting Away

After 18 years of drifting at sea, moving with the currents and battered by wind and water, the world's largest iceberg is reaching its end. Iceberg B-15 first broke away from Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf in March 2000. It was about 17-miles long and 25 miles wide, with an area of 4,250 square miles, nearly as big as Connecticut. Since then, the iceberg has been fracturing into smaller pieces, most of which have melted away. Only two pieces remain big enough (at least 20 square nautical miles) to be tracked by the National Ice Center.

NASA astronauts shot an aerial photograph of B-15Z on May 22nd, and found that the once giant ice berg is now just 10 nautical miles long and five nautical miles wide, with a large fracture along its center, and smaller pieces splintering at its edge. While it's still a trackable size, it may not remain for much longer.

NASA

The iceberg piece has travelled some three-quarters of the way around Antarctica, but encountered currents near the tip of the continent that forced it to head North, towards dangerously warmer climates. Its location doesn't bode well for the ice berg. “Spoiler alert: they tend to pond with water, which then works its way through the iceberg like a set of knives. Icebergs that make it this far have been known to rapidly melt and end their life cycles here," Kelly Brunt, a glaciologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center explained.

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